Al Saleh Mosque, Sana'a

Sana'a, Yemen

I visited the brand new Presidential “Al Saleh Mosque” in Sana’a before it opened to the public this past Ramadan.

Exterior view of the new mosque.

For all that there have been rumblings among the populace about how the money could better have been spent building hospitals and schools - the mosque is said to have cost $60 million - it is really quite stunning. Most of the building materials were local; the frame is concrete with pale golden blocks of dressed limestone on the external walls, and polished speckled granite for the massive indoor piers. Red limestone is used to to accent design features. An exception was made for the colored marble flooring of the courtyard which came from India, Italy and Oman.

Exquisitely rendered courtyard in imported marble.

The mosque combines traditional Islamic elements of domes, minarets, arches, carved mihrab, and bands of incised and gold-leaf calligraphy, and blends it with uniquely Yemeni architectural aspects; the distinctive minarets, of which 4 of the 6 are 100 meters high, feature red brick and are banded and criss-crossed in white gypsum plaster, the drums of the five domes are pierced with qamariyya-windows of colored glass and Yemeni-style merlons decorate the exterior roof edging.

Inside the main hall which can hold up to 13000 worshippers, a mammoth Bohemian glass chandelier is suspended from the central dome, the carved doors are of Burmese teak, the coffered inlaid ceiling is American oak, and the carpet which was woven in Turkey is made of New Zealand lambswool. An additional 31,000 worshippers can be accommodated outside, while a large women’s prayer hall is located upstairs.


The Bohemian glass central chandelier

The exterior walls with bands of incised carving of Koranic verses in pale golden limestone are stunning.

Weddings, funerals and a controversial Soap opera.

Sana'a, Yemen 2008

Weddings are a daily occurrence in the months leading up to Ramadan when weddings do not take place. In the Islamic world, the time frame between the official marriage contract signing and the wedding may be a few days, or it may be months.  But although the contract signing is the official one, the couple do not live together until the actual celebration of it, married or not. There may be many reasons for the delay; financial, waiting for distant family members to be there at the same time, a death in the family etc.  Weddings in the Islamic world are extremely expensive affairs and Yemen is no exception;  hospitality is expected to be lavish and the whole neighborhood or community is invited, everyone must be fed and a meal is nothing without meat, qat must be procured at the very least for the males of the families involved and in the case of wealthier families, for everyone, women need clothes and the bride needs a dowry including jewelry, and everything has gone up in price including gold, qat and lamb!

Women celebrate at home and/or in special halls rented for the occasion with fancy food, shishas and qat, as well as loud music live or taped, while for the men, huge tents are erected throughout the city where they wander in and out as and when they can, gathering to chat, smoke, chew qat and dance. There is almost always an oud player. (An oud being a fretless, 11-stringed instrument shaped like an old-fashioned lute – the word lute itself coming from the Arabic – 'al-oud'.) 

Fortunately the oud player and singer who sings at weddings in my area is excellent and I am treated to a free concert every second or third week. I say fortunate, because he plays until 0315 and then the Imam takes over. 

The Silk Road - Part III

Kyrgyzstan & Uzbekistan, May/June 2008

We camped in a yurt opposite Tash Rabat an isolated ‘caravanserai’ 15 kilometers off the main Silk Road and what is still a main national road. The function of this building which dates back to the 10^th century, has never been fully explained. It could not have been a straightforward caravanserai because it lies so far off the road in a remote, cul-de-sac of a valley, and there is no courtyard for pack animals which was obviously a central feature of a caravanserai. One of the meanings of the verb ‘rabata’ in Arabic is “to be garrisoned”, and Tash Rabat has two large halls each with a raised platform, ostensibly where the soldiers slept. Garrisoned caravanserais in Central Asia were relatively common due to banditry but this still does not satisfactorily explain the lack of space for animals or why it was built so far from the road. North African ‘ribats’ on the coast were built as defensive structures, (see Girl Solo in Arabia/Tunisia/Pearl of the Sahel) but also came to have the additional meaning of being retreats where pious men lived on charity usually extended by the local ruler. This desolate place is much more likely to have been some kind of a religious retreat but why was it built in the middle of nowhere especially if soldiers were needed to protect it?

The splendidly isolated Tash Rabat

In the 10th century, Islam had already arrived in this area principally via the ruling Turkic Karakhanids who held sway until another Turkic tribe, the Seljuks, gained ascendancy in the 11th century. But by the 15th century after the Uzbeks had ousted the Ferghana-born Babur, great-great-great grandson of Tamerlaine and founder of the Moghul dynasty in India, the Kyrgyz were in decline, and Buddhism re-appeared with the Dzungarians, ethnic Tibetan Mongolians, who briefly ruled this area as well as Kashgar. (See previous post, the Silk Road II.) There have been oft-repeated assertions that Tash Rabat was a Buddhist temple and this interpretation may stem from the Dzungarian era, however the high iwan portal and dome over a covered hall with examples of squinches, is a classic early example of Seljuk 11th century architecture albeit more crudely constructed than one finds further west along the Silk Road. The present structure is said to date back only to the 15th century which is even more surprising, unless it was built by the occupants themselves who were not trained masons.  Given this area’s history of constant incursion, perhaps it was an outpost from which early warning of impending invasion could be relayed, or were the soldiers protecting Sufi adepts in the time of the Buddhist Dzungarians?  Tash Rabat remains shrouded in mystery.

The Silk Road Part II – The Desert’s Art Gallery, Alexander’s Legacy and the Fragrant Concubine

The Silk Road, May 2008

And so on to Dunhuang and the Mogao caves. Dunhuang lies at the edge of the formidable Taklamakan desert, second largest sand desert in the world after the Sahara. Travelers – monks, merchants and warriors, about to cross it needed somewhere to pray for safe crossing, travelers who had crossed it successfully wanted somewhere to give thanks for having survived. And so along the sandstone cliffs of the Ji river over a period of a thousand years from the 4^th to the 14^th century AD, spanning the dynasties of the Sixteen Kingdoms to the Yuan, or Mongol, 735 caves were carved out at Mogao. (There are 5 sites in all but the other 4 have only 77 caves altogether.)

Caves cut out of the rock at Dunhuang

Artists were hired to paint their interiors with often wildly colorful scenes from the Jataka Tales (the life of the Buddha), Buddhist mythology and illustrations of the Buddhist sutras (scriptures), as well as scenes of court life with musicians, dancers, and courtiers. Statues of clay and wood were sculpted of Buddha, Boddhisattvas, kings and demons and installed, or sometimes carved out of the walls. Dunhuang supported a community of monks and over time it became a center for meditation, burial, worship and for the storage of documents and artifacts. Documents in Chinese, Tangut Uighur, Tibetan, Mongolian, Syriac, Sanskrit and Brahmi have been found, as well as metals, bone and stone vessels, bricks, coins, pottery, silk and textiles, figurines and stenciled stupas. (There are no photographs of the caves, cameras are forbidden.) The caves are also a UNESCO World Heritage Site http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/440

The Silk Road - Part 1, Deceit and Glamor, Warriors of Qin and The Big Goose Pagoda

May 2008
So, once again far removed from Ibn Battuta’s footsteps, I find myself in Hong Kong. I was last here 30 years ago, which even as I write seems to be quite impossible – how can this be? The city has changed enormously – for one thing, half of the harbor has disappeared and is now filled with glamorously tall skyscrapers. The energy of the place reminds me of New York even if the view of Hong Kong Island is more San Francisco with its steep hills and twisty stairways. I stayed on Kowloon side in a small boutique hotel called The Luxe Manor www.theluxemanor.com   which was both charming and quirky. I am here because due to the Olympics in Beijing, Hong Kong this year is the starting point for the northern Silk Road trip I am leading, over the Turugart Pass.
View of Hong Kong's skyscrapers built on what was the harbor.